Facebook and the Nature of Invention

[Sedai]

ADMIN EDIT: this thread originated in The Shoutbox (http://www.movieforums.com/community/shoutbox.php) and was moved here for the usual reasons.

Zuckerberg > Winklevoss.

"So, if you allegedly invented Facebook, why didn't you like, invent Facebook?"

That says it right there, as far as I am concerned.

[Yoda]

It's a clever line, but their response could be "because the programmer we hired stole the idea from us." Zuckerberg's line carries with it two assumptions: 1) that having an idea first should not guarantee "ownership" over the idea, and 2) that the only people who really invent things are the technical people who put them together.

I don't really agree with either premise, but obviously intellectual property has been, is, and always will be, an incredibly difficult subject to grapple with.

[planet news]

2) that the only people who really invent things are the technical people who put them together.This is plausible. For example, whenever we see a car that has wipers on the headlights or headlights that rotate in conjunction with a turn, my dad likes to say that he thought of those ideas years before they finally came out.

Now, let's say he went out one day and told this idea to some engineers and they ended up building it and selling the design to car manufacturers without him knowing. Is he therefore the actual inventor of those components just because he had a vague conception?

I can have tons of ideas about any number of things at this very moment, but am I owed money because I say them aloud or tell them to skilled professionals who implement them? Honestly, I wouldn't feel the slightest amount of jealousy or ownership over the product if that happened. That is, unless I was planning to personally implement the idea myself sometime soon---which, let's be honest, the Winklevoss's were not capable of doing in their case.

It's pretty typical class logic that the workers are just the property of the bourgeoisie, and there is no mystery in this story as to whether or not the Winklevosses were "of money".

[John McClane]

You can't patent ideas, only inventions. Zuckerberg stole the idea, rewrote the invention, and patented it. Winklevosses got screwed but it's their own fault.

[Yoda]

Obviously, it depends on the idea. Thinking "cars should have better gas mileage" is not really an idea in this context, because it's a standing goal that everyone is aware of and the only thing that will make it happen is engineering prowess. Lack of wanting better mileage is not the chief impediment in making it happen. But sometimes the idea is the hard part.

There was nothing stopping Blockbuster, for example, from taking their massive stock of DVDs and renting them via mail for a monthly fee, but Netflix thought of it first. In that case, forming the idea was the major impediment to its reality, because the rest is made up of logistical problems that have already been solved or streamlined. All the pieces were there, but nobody had put them together.

At this very moment, there are countless products or services that have not been created yet, but that both you and I have the means to create and sell and become fabulously wealthy from. But we don't have the idea. It hasn't occurred to us. But it will occur to someone, and that realization will be valuable, because none of us were able to think of it. I say this as someone who has to grapple with both realities absolutely every day: I have to come up with ideas for websites, and I have to implement them. And sometimes coming up with the idea is way, way harder than writing the code to make it happen.

Also, valuing ideas in no way suggests that the workers in a company are the owner's property. It suggests that the work is their property, which it is.

[John McClane]

Yup, and that's precisely why you can't patent an idea.

[planet news]

Also, valuing ideas in no way suggests that the workers in a company are the owner's property. It suggests that the work is their property, which it is.Let me bring out a Deleuzian formula here. Work = Energy = Life.

Now I'm glad I brought up Deleuze's "Idea" in pm.

Ideas are virtual, like you say. They exist in a kind of space of possibility---up for grabs by anyone who can perceive this space. But in order for the Idea to take shape in actualized, real space, you need to "solve the problem" of the Idea. You need to find a way to bring it into this world in whatever form you can. This is what takes actual work, energy, or life.

In many ways, Ideas are created long before they are actually articulated. One could say that the invention of the actualized space of the internet simultaneously brought about the virtual space of all Ideas for things like Facebook, Myspace, or Movie Forums. But these exist solely as problems until they are solved (however imperfectly) by actual work.

You could even say that Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, etc. are all particular solutions of the same problem. Nevertheless, each incarnation is a real, material product; not an Idea.

[John McClane]

We must not forget that Al Gore invented the Internet.

[will.15]

But he DID NOT say he "created the internet". He said he "took the initiative in creating the internet"

That statement is actually true. That U.S Military project was called ARPANET. The US military portion of ARPANET was split off in 1983 to form MILNET.


In 1988 Al Gore sponsored the National High Performance Computer Act which created a national computing plan and began connecting other Universities and Libraries to the existing ARPANET network.


Then, Al Gore began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill") after hearing the 1988 report toward a National Research Network submitted to Congress by a group chaired by UCLA professor of computer science, Leonard Kleinrock, one of the central creators of the ARPANET (the ARPANET, first deployed by Kleinrock and others in 1969, is the predecessor of the Internet). The bill was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Gore referred to as the "information superhighway."

SO, while quite amusing to see ignorant people who know nothing about the history of the Internet perpetuate the lie that Al Gore had nothing to do with it. Al Gore did in fact take the initiative in creating the the internet.


He is actually owed quite a bit of thanks and credit for there being an internet today.

[John McClane]

Uh, I think the main point behind the joke is that no one invented the Internet. No worries if you didn't catch that part.

[Fiscal]

Super cereal!

[Austruck]

Uh, I think the main point behind the joke is that no one invented the Internet. No worries if you didn't catch that part.
:D

[will.15]

Two people actually did invent the internet.

[will.15]

I guess techibally they invented the world wide web, but without that the rest of us couldn't be on the internet or web or whatever.

[will.15]

technically

[Yoda]

Ideas are virtual, like you say. They exist in a kind of space of possibility---up for grabs by anyone who can perceive this space. But in order for the Idea to take shape in actualized, real space, you need to "solve the problem" of the Idea. You need to find a way to bring it into this world in whatever form you can. This is what takes actual work, energy, or life.
I don't think I agree with this. Primarily because thinking is clearly a type of work, and it is a skill in any meaningful sense of the word. The quality of thought can vary, and it can be improved by training and education and mere practice. This makes it, for our purposes, analagous to any technical skill, and thus no less valuable. And, I'd argue, it's not as easily (or as often) taught.

You used the phrase "solve the problem," but in some cases the problem is not a logistical one. In some cases all the procedures and materials are easily obtainable, and it is how best to use them that is the "problem." In these cases, the solution is the idea itself.

It becomes most obvious, I think, when thought of this way: what is the single least common aspect of a given invention? In some cases, it is the raw technical skill needed to bring it about. But in some inventions, almost any of us have the capability to enact them. Thus, in those cases, the single least common aspect is the idea itself.

Put another way: start removing people from the equation until the invention doesn't exist any more, and you'll have found your inventor. If you take Henry Ford away, there's no assembly line (at least, not yet). If you take a specific assembly line worker away, the idea still happens, but with a different person in that particular role.

[Yoda]

Yup, and that's precisely why you can't patent an idea.
Is this true, though? I know there are many patents for inventions that don't fully exist, and I'm fairly certain you can patent rough concepts, as well. Apple, for example, is famous for filing all sorts of almost preemptive patents.

[John McClane]

Is this true, though? I know there are many patents for inventions that don't fully exist, and I'm fairly certain you can patent rough concepts, as well. Apple, for example, is famous for filing all sorts of almost preemptive patents.That's when they leave the realm of ideas and enter the real world. If I have an idea for an invention (phone) or a process (social networking) I have to show or explain how it works. Supposedly, patent law diagrams are very different from engineering schematics. Thus protecting that one particular instance of said idea. Now someone can easily create another way of doing things and patent that particular instance. And in the case of Apple, you can patent both.

[John McClane]

Sometimes the patents only apply to the names of general products. For instance, Apple doesn't own the patent for a MP3 player but for the iPod. They just designed it differently and called it something else.

[John McClane]

This is why it's perfectly legal to buy someone's product, reverse engineer it, redesign it from the ground up, and then patent that design and destroy the competitor that made it first. :)

[planet news]

I don't think I agree with this. Primarily because thinking is clearly a type of work, and it is a skill in any meaningful sense of the word. The quality of thought can vary, and it can be improved by training and education and mere practice. This makes it, for our purposes, analogous to any technical skill, and thus no less valuable. And, I'd argue, it's not as easily (or as often) taught. Agreed. Thinking is indeed a type of work. Thinking opens up your imagination to the possibilities of reality, and this takes work. However, it is precisely in this way that thinking only provides access to the Idea. This is the limited extent of Winklevoss's still very real contribution to Facebook.

Sure, the Winklevoss's invented something: they invented the Idea. The problem is that their Idea was not really what they wanted; what they wanted was the product and the money that came from it, and as much as they want to somehow extend their virtual desire into actuality, only Zuckerberg can properly make the claim to the actualization itself.

You used the phrase "solve the problem," but in some cases the problem is not a logistical one. In some cases all the procedures and materials are easily obtainable, and it is how best to use them that is the "problem." In these cases, the solution is the idea itself. Well, of course, all solutions are at the same time Ideas, but implementation is not a virtual process but a real one---one which, by Murphy's Law, will almost always run into unforeseen obstacles. So where two competitive Rubik's Cube solvers both have the exact same solution, one will inevitably actualize that solution before the other by the sheer incongruity of reality alone.

Put another way: start removing people from the equation until the invention doesn't exist anymore, and you'll have found your inventor. If you take Henry Ford away, there's no assembly line (at least, not yet). If you take a specific assembly line worker away, the idea still happens, but with a different person in that particular role.Your logic goes wrong here. If your zero level system for invention-production fails to be isolated for an assembly line worker, then it should be at the same time made "open" to substitutions on Ford's level as well. Why not preclude the happenstance social positioning of Ford's economic dominance and establish, for sake of argument, an even superior level of management: one who organizes individuals for the invention-production of Ideas themselves of which Ford himself becomes only---to this superior management---a menial assembly line thinker who can be replaced just as easily with someone of equal intellect and creativity?

However, if you do chose to isolate your system, I think you'll find that Ford's role of unveiling the idea is essentially moot without the means to implement it physically. Remove even the most menial of the assembly line workers without replacement and you'll find that specific aspect of the Idea's actualization rendered moot.

In other words, no part of the chain of invention-production is necessarily irreplaceable. This is shown again and again throughout history especially through the so-called "great ideas" like Calculus or Evolution where two thinkers simultaneously and independently develop them.

What is singular and irreplaceable is the precise actualization of the chain of invention-production itself---the presentation of the unique Idea and product for the first time ever in history.

It becomes most obvious, I think, when thought of this way: what is the single least common aspect of a given invention? In some cases, it is the raw technical skill needed to bring it about. But in some inventions, almost any of us have the capability to enact them. Thus, in those cases, the single least common aspect is the idea itself. I understand your Socratic technique here in attempting to isolate the "essence" of an invention, but your answer does not go far enough if you want to be thorough and accurate, which is where the truth lays. The reality of the matter is how this "least common aspect" of any given invention (or of any substance or event) is its historical/spatial-specific actualization---the fact that we did this thing at this specific time in this specific place. Not one other human being can attest to that.

In other words, it is not so much how it happened but that it happened at all and the people involved in making it happen. This is what I think Zuckerberg means with his simple statement: only he can attest to having created Facebook and while the Winklevoss's were sitting around waiting for him; he was the one who actually did it.

[Sedai]

Sorry to post and bail last night, had some stuff to take care of. I guess I don't have a ton to add here, as Planet has already summed up what I was getting at, albeit in a much more thorough and well-thought out fashion. ;)

[Austruck]

As for the whole "thinking is work" discussion: Frankly, for some people it's apparently a LOT of work.

And that's all I have to say about that.

[Yoda]

Sure, the Winklevoss's invented something: they invented the Idea. The problem is that their Idea was not really what they wanted; what they wanted was the product and the money that came from it, and as much as they want to somehow extend their virtual desire into actuality, only Zuckerberg can properly make the claim to the actualization itself.
I think you're jumping around at different points in the process. When you say they don't want the idea, that they want the product and money that comes from it, you're positing that they already have the idea. Naturally once someone has an idea they'll want to put it into action. But before they have the idea, they want the idea.

You seem to be suggesting that the idea is of less significance because it must always be put into actualization. But this works in the opposite direction: the actualization has to be traced back to the idea. I see no reason to give one some kind of inherent significance over the other, or claim that one is more "real" than the other.

Your logic goes wrong here. If your zero level system for invention-production fails to be isolated for an assembly line worker, then it should be at the same time made "open" to substitutions on Ford's level as well. Why not preclude the happenstance social positioning of Ford's economic dominance and establish, for sake of argument, an even superior level of management: one who organizes individuals for the invention-production of Ideas themselves of which Ford himself becomes only---to this superior management---a menial assembly line thinker who can be replaced just as easily with someone of equal intellect and creativity?
I don't have to do this because reality has done it for me: nobody but Ford came up with it. There were many, many people in all sorts of other industries who would have benefitted greatly from conceiving of the assembly line before Ford, yet none of them did. There is no substitution because making such a substitution would be sheer speculation about who would have figured it out eventually.

On the other hand, we know for a fact that the people who worked on the Model-T assembly lines were able to do so with fairly unexceptional skills, and that they could have been replaced if one had up and left. That is one of the assembly line's considerable perks.

However, if you do chose to isolate your system, I think you'll find that Ford's role of unveiling the idea is essentially moot without the means to implement it physically. Remove even the most menial of the assembly line workers without replacement and you'll find that specific aspect of the Idea's actualization rendered moot.
Why should we remove an assembly line worker without replacement? There were replacements. That's part of the elegance of the idea: almost anyone can learn to do a single task on an assembly line well.

In other words, no part of the chain of invention-production is necessarily irreplaceable. This is shown again and again throughout history especially through the so-called "great ideas" like Calculus or Evolution where two thinkers simultaneously and independently develop them.
I thought about raising this earlier but didn't want to overly complicate things unless necessary, so I'll just address it now: yes, some great ideas are of a nature that they will almost certainly be discovered at some point, and if we remove Henry Ford from history, someone else probably conceives of the assembly line down the road. But they do so later on. How much later, we don't know, but time is part of the value equation here: the invention has its obvious value, but it also has value for happening when it happens, as opposed to later.

What is singular and irreplaceable is the precise actualization of the chain of invention-production itself---the presentation of the unique Idea and product for the first time ever in history.
I just don't see how this follows. In the example I'm using (the assembly line), the actualization is not irreplacable at all. To the contrary, it is very replacable, and easily duplicted.

I understand your Socratic technique here in attempting to isolate the "essence" of an invention, but your answer does not go far enough if you want to be thorough and accurate, which is where the truth lays. The reality of the matter is how this "least common aspect" of any given invention (or of any substance or event) is its historical/spatial-specific actualization---the fact that we did this thing at this specific time in this specific place. Not one other human being can attest to that.
I suppose, but that doesn't inherently make it the most valuable, difficult, or significant part of the process.

In other words, it is not so much how it happened but that it happened at all and the people involved in making it happen. This is what I think Zuckerberg means with his simple statement: only he can attest to having created Facebook and while the Winklevoss's were sitting around waiting for him; he was the one who actually did it.
Yeah, I mean, I get what he's saying. He's just framing things in a very self-serving way. And he's aided by the fact that this particular idea is not unique and that he may not have broken any actual laws while stealing it. He's making a statement that is literally true, which is why it's so pithy and interesting. But as I said something like four shouts ago, his statement carries with it assumptions about the value of ideas and the nature of inventions that are pretty clearly erroneous, at least sometimes. I'm not really going after Zuckerberg, just the self-serving assumptions in that particular line.

[John McClane]

Here's an idea: let's stop talking about ideas. :D

[DexterRiley]

Here's an idea: let's stop talking about ideas. :D

Then you better know hpw to flip a good burger John.

[Sedai]

The aim is to only talk about ideas, actually.

"Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." -E Roosevelt.

[Austruck]

Here's an idea: let's stop talking about ideas. :D
Well, not us, John. It's the two of them who need to stop talking about ideas. ;)

[Austruck]

The aim is to only talk about ideas, actually.

"Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." -E Roosevelt.
How 'bout them Penguins?

[John McClane]

I seriously hope no one took what I said at face value. The statement was clearly paradoxical humor.

[will.15]

Sorry to post and bail last night, had some stuff to take care of. I guess I don't have a ton to add here, as Planet has already summed up what I was getting at, albeit in a much more thorough and well-thought out fashion. ;)
And long-winded.

[Sedai]

If a couple short paragraphs is long-winded. I don't consider it so. Read Phil Dick's Exegesis - now THAT is long winded. ;)

[DexterRiley]

Sorry to post and bail last night, had some stuff to take care of. I guess I don't have a ton to add here, as Planet has already summed up what I was getting at, albeit in a much more thorough and well-thought out fashion. ;)

http://listen.grooveshark.com/s/On+The+Loose/2vXEva?src=5

[Sedai]

Awwww yeahhhhhhh ;)

[planet news]

I think you're jumping around at different points in the process. When you say they don't want the idea, that they want the product and money that comes from it, you're positing that they already have the idea. Naturally once someone has an idea they'll want to put it into action. But before they have the idea, they want the idea.Yes. But what I meant was that most people value the actualization over the Idea in the sense of the solution over the problem. Of course, the problem/Idea must first be properly presented in order to achieve a solution, but isn't invention precisely NOT the kind of field that would value the problem itself? The "I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea" commercial even pokes fun at this concept, ironically casting the problem as synonymous with the solution.

Look at it from the Winklevoss's perspective. To them, they come up with a problem for Zuckerberg to solve---how do we interface people to the exclusivity of campus facebooks? To them, Zuckerberg makes a miracle happen with his supernatural coding skills. Now, if only they had (like Eduardo) been the ones to actually fund Zuckerberg's project, perhaps they themselves would have played some minimal role in this "miracle", but we don't find this.

In other words, just because the problem/Idea is always the first step to achieving an actualization does not mean that the problem/Idea itself is what is most valued by invention-production---quite the opposite. Indeed, the Idea of calculus was essentially stumbled upon graphically by Archimedes B.C.E. but we give the credit of inventing calculus itself to Newton/Leibniz because they actualized the Idea into a functional "product". The same goes round and round. I am not criticizing Ford. He DID invent and implement assembly lines. What I'm saying is that it's not his Idea we should be or even are impressed with but rather the fact and means by which he did so (as opposed to someone else doing it a slightly different way).

You seem to be suggesting that the idea is of less significance because it must always be put into actualization. But this works in the opposite direction: the actualization has to be traced back to the idea. I see no reason to give one some kind of inherent significance over the other, or claim that one is more "real" than the other.The reason is, in our case, to justify Zuckerberg's biting "logic". In the more general case, the reason is to establish an incommensurable disjunction between the virtual and the actual where both are nonetheless equally "real" but one is valued, I claim, MUCH MORE in the field of invention. This is possible since the virtual is not really so much a "potential" rather than a "universal problem". In philosophy's case, one can clearly see how the Idea dominates over any actualization, but this is not philosophy; this is invention-production.

I don't have to do this because reality has done it for me: nobody but Ford came up with it. There were many, many people in all sorts of other industries who would have benefitted greatly from conceiving of the assembly line before Ford, yet none of them did. There is no substitution because making such a substitution would be sheer speculation about who would have figured it out eventually. This paragraph was pretty much my point in a nutshell. Take a look at what you wrote here. Actualizations are what matter. Reality is what matters. Sheer speculations do not matter (at least for invention-production). These sheer speculations, as you put it, are what Deleuze likes to call the virtual. And the virtual---though just as real and a part of the plane of immanence as the actual---always takes on this sense of not mattering, since the virtual is, I claim, utterly disengaged from the actual except in a basely causal way. Why is this? I think the film put it best when Zuckerberg says something along the lines of "fashion is never finished". In other words, the Idea of fashion is always a problem, but each particular solution to it is the thing we call invention-production.

I thought about raising this earlier but didn't want to overly complicate things unless necessary, so I'll just address it now: yes, some great ideas are of a nature that they will almost certainly be discovered at some point, and if we remove Henry Ford from history, someone else probably conceives of the assembly line down the road. But they do so later on. How much later, we don't know, but time is part of the value equation here: the invention has its obvious value, but it also has value for happening when it happens, as opposed to later.Now you've pretty much proven my whole point. Like I said, I wasn't so much criticizing Ford for his accomplishment but rather criticizing the view of accomplishment as the accomplishment of an Idea instead of the accomplishment of the ENTIRE process of invention-production.

What is singular and irreplaceable is the precise actualization of the chain of invention-production itself---the presentation of the unique Idea and product for the first time ever in history.I just don't see how this follows. In the example I'm using (the assembly line), the actualization is not irreplaceable at all. To the contrary, it is very replaceable, and easily duplicated. You misunderstand me. I mean the singular, irreplaceable historical fact of its becoming. The fact that Facebook was launched by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004 out of his dorm. The fact that Google was launched in September 1998 out of a garage.

I suppose, but that doesn't inherently make it the most valuable, difficult, or significant part of the process.No, you're right. It doesn't "inherently" make it any of those things, but it does MAKE IT---it does actualize it at the particular time it did (something which you yourself said was an important factor of Ford's accomplishment).

This all began because you claimed Zuckerberg made wrong assumptions in his statement, but I don't think he has, and certainly not in his situation.

A final example.

Why was Deleuze such an influential thinker? Why does he and should he get the credit for thinking what he did? Is it really because he is the first human in history to ever think those thoughts? And are his thoughts so independent from influence? Does anyone ever not, as Newton said, stand on the shoulders of giants?

The answer is none of those things as much as someone like me would like to think it. The fact is, we only look at awe at the person like Deleuze because he was the first person to bring those ideas TO US. He was the first to write them down and be in a position to get them published and disseminated to the mass populace.

Not to mention the fact that, without him, we would have entered the 21st century without a competent modern materialism, so his "invention" is not just well done but also extremely timely. The same goes for any invention including Facebook, including the assembly line. They are all more or less timely and more or less well done.

Let's be honest. Is Deleuze even the best person to have done it? NO. He likes to write in a fairly confusing way that takes a lot of work to understand. If someone who wrote clearer, like John Searl or Dan Dennet, had articulated the same ideas, it would have been a lot better, but it doesn't matter. Deleuze did it when he did it and he made it happen. Plain and simple.

[Austruck]

Hey, here's an interesting "real world" application of this whole idea-versus-implementation thing. This is a product we're following on the Alphasmart forum on Flickr, and this article calls it "buzzware" and talks a lot about ideas and implementation.... Totally appropriate for the ongoing discussion here (plus, I want one of these things if it ever happens!):
http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/25/technology/noteslate/index.htm

[Sedai]

Let's not forget that Eduardo also gave Mark Zuckerberg a critical algorithm to make the Facebook engine work the way they wanted it to. Obviously the finances came into play in Eduardo's undisclosed settlement, but I would think the bit of code was also involved. They did go out of their way in the film to talk about that piece of code multiple times...

[Yoda]

Okay, moved to a thread. And I guess I'm on the clock.

[planet news]

Nah, no clock. Feel free to file this in your non-urgent basket.

[Yoda]

That's a pretty big basket.

[planet news]

We're gonna need a bigger... ah you know the drill.